


A Bad Moon on the Rise (or, Their First Secret)

by SiriuslyQueer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Animagus, Bisexual Remus Lupin, Childhood Friends, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gay Sirius Black, Gryffindor, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Hospital Wing, Hogwarts Sixth Year, M/M, Magic, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), My First AO3 Post, My First Fanfic, My First Work in This Fandom, Pining, Queer Character, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23449276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SiriuslyQueer/pseuds/SiriuslyQueer
Summary: Remus and Sirius have been butting heads for weeks, ever since an encounter sneaking around the corridors after the Hufflepuff match left them both...confused. Things start coming to a head after the next Full Moon, and the boys may not be able to run from their feelings much longer.Featuring fluff and pining and comforting and all the good angstiness. This is excerpted from a longer Marauders fic I'm working on, but since I'm changing how the narration is structured in that fic it may look entirely different by the time it's done and this deserves to see the light of day. I've been writing for a while but this is my first posted fic so please leave suggestions in the comments!
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 33
Kudos: 155





	A Bad Moon on the Rise (or, Their First Secret)

A jolt of panic in his chest. A sharp inhale. Then another, past his heart clogging his throat.

No matter how many times he wakes up in the hospital wing, in that first second his eyes open to the high, white ceiling, Remus has no idea where he is. It doesn’t happen when he wakes up in the Shack.

But he’s here, not there. Which is how he knows it was a bad night.

His breathing slows, but a bubble of shame swells tight against his sternum. He only ever remembers flashes of his transformations, single cuts from a movie reel that add up to nothing. Disjointed glimpses of blood and teeth and everything he has to apologize for.

Pressing his head back into the starch-stiff pillow, he slams his fist down on the mattress beside him. Pain slices up his bandaged forearm. He sucks in a breath hard through his teeth. Fucking. Moron.

“Easy.” At the loudest it’s a whisper, but Remus jumps and clutches at the covers draped across his torso.

“Jesus fuck, Pads,” he says, gasping. Did he break a rib last night? (He recognizes the tight, sharp ache; it’s not his first).

Sirius smirks (probably at Remus swearing like a Muggle) but doesn’t look up from his book. Remus turns his head to read the cover— _Brideshead Revisited_. One of his Muggle novels. He feels heat creep up his neck. Sirius must have swiped it from his trunk.

Remus stares at the ceiling, cataloging all the parts that hurt now and all the parts that will hurt in a few days until he can’t ignore the sound of Sirius’s breathing next to him anymore.

“What are you doing here?”

“Reading.” Sirius turns a page.

“Because it’s such an avid pastime of yours?” It comes out like an accusation.

Sirius snorts. “I thought last night was just a bad moon. But clearly something’s up _your_ ass, not Moony’s.”

Remus whips up to snap at him but fire flares in his ribs and collapses him back to the pillow with a groan.

“Easy,” Sirius repeats. “You walloped yourself good and proper last night.”

When Remus opens his eyes again Sirius has scooted closer to the bed, book tented over his knee. He’s got dark circles dug under both eyes and a purple bruise blooming along his jaw. A deep gash splits his bottom lip, scarlet-jellied and swelling. For one bizarre second Remus wants to reach out and brush it with his thumb. 

“I’m fine,” Sirius says, reading his mind like he does sometimes. (Sirius is no Occlumens, he just knows Remus. Arsehole.)

Remus looks up at the ceiling again. “Prongs and Wormtail?”

“Sleeping it off.”

Remus chews the chapped edge of his bottom lip. Guilt rises in his throat and he thinks he might throw up. He swallows hard.

“Really, we’re okay.” Sirius is staring at him; he can feel it. “Just a rough night.” A pause, then, “It’s not your fault.”

Which isn’t true _at all_ , but Remus doesn’t have the energy for that fight right now, again. “How bad?” he asks instead.

Sirius sighs, raking his hair back from his face. Remus can tell he’s deciding whether or not to lie.

“Bad. You were raging from the second you Changed. Slamming the walls. Clawing at your chest.” He sighs again, and it’s a tangible thing. Pained. “We couldn’t let you out to run like that. So—we kept you in the shack. Me and Prongs. We took it in turns.”

Remus closes his eyes again. He doesn’t say anything, because what can he say? Thanks for not letting me kill someone? Sorry I almost killed you? Even in his head the words don’t have enough weight.

He feels the pressure in his chest first (where he always feels it first): A sinking _something_ , like magic, but _more_. Something with mass, and it’s crushing him. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. He wishes Sirius would leave.

“Stop.” It’s a command, but Sirius’s voice is soft. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”

Remus inhales, but he’s not getting air. He clenches his jaw. “Go upstairs.”

“Yeah, not happening.”

“I’m serious.”

“No, I’m Siri—”

“Just go!”

The echo hangs in the air around them, and after that, the silence. Remus listens for Madam Pomfrey’s footsteps. For Sirius’s chair scraping the tile floor. He chews at a rough spot on his lip until he tastes salt. 

Sirius. For once, at a loss for words. Remus breathes hard through his nose. His chest shakes. It’s taking all his energy not to cry. (It’s the hormones—the virus?—whatever it is that brings on the Change. He still doesn’t understand all the details of lycanthropic body chemistry.)

His skin is scorching, but Sirius’s hand is cool. He doesn’t hold Remus’s hand, just rests his on top, like he might have put it there by accident.

“You’re dead lucky this moon fell on a Friday,” Sirius says. “We’ve got a couple days to sleep and start looking less like trauma victims before Monday lessons.” He pauses, then, “Have you finished the reading for Charms?”

He rubs his thumb in little circles on the back of Remus’s hand. Hot tears leak from the corners of his eyes, but Sirius keeps talking like he doesn’t notice. He prattles on about how he hasn’t even started McGonagall’s essay, and can he look over Remus’s, just for reference, of course, and Remus lets Sirius’s voice take the place of the thoughts thrashing in his head until his eyelids droop closed, and he breathes.

***

“How’s he doing?” James says as he eases the door shut behind him. For a moment Sirius can hear squeals and cheering down the stairs.

Remus is passed out on his stomach, hugging his pillow like a stuffed bear.

Sirius looks up over his book, legs stretched out across his own bed. “Hasn’t moved.”

“Good. I reckon he needs the rest.”

They’d flat out refused to let Remus skip Sunday dinner (“For all your body knows you fought about five ogres less than 48 hours ago,” James had chided him. “You need calories.”) but they’d had to half-carry him back up the last few flights of stairs. When they deposited him on his bed and removed his shoes, he’d mumbled something about needing to sit for a minute. He’d meet them in the common room in a bit.

That was two hours ago.

James squats at the end of his bed and rifles through his trunk. “You coming down? Peter has a bet going with Dominic over who can fit more Fizzing Whizzbees in his mouth at once without frothing all over the rug. I think they’re each up to eight.”

Sirius snorts. “Nah, I’m not up for the hustle and bustle of court life tonight.” He rolls a hand theatrically above his head. “Although for the record I’ll put two sickles on Wormtail. He can stretch out his cheeks like a hamster.”

James chuckles, head still inside his trunk. “Fair.”

“What _are_ you doing in there?”

“Looking for a book. Told Evans I’d loan it to her.” He surfaces with a copy of _Falmouth Falcons: Soaring with the Greats_. “She’s a Harpey’s fan, of course, but it can’t hurt to show her a superior take on the sport.”

Only James would try to woo a girl with quidditch. “You tell her that?”

“In a manner of speaking.” So no, then. Or at least omitting the word _superior_ , if he knows what’s good for him.

“What are you reading that’s so fascinating?”

Sirius lays the book on his lap. “Herbology extra credit.” He crosses an arm over the pages, like he’s flopped it there at random and isn’t at all hiding that it’s a novel and not one of Professor Sprout’s curling botanical guides. “I’m so far behind it’ll be spring before I catch up.”

James scrunches his nose. “Moony’s getting to you”—Sirius’s mouth goes dry—“We can barely pry _him_ out of the library as it is.”

“Noted.”

“You sure you’re in for the night?” James says. “That fifth year girl—Pamela Something?—has been asking about you.” He waggles his eyebrows in that ridiculous way that only James could pull off without looking like a total prat.

Sirius rolls his eyes. “Send my deepest regrets to my adoring subjects.”

“As you wish, Sire.” And with an exaggerated flourish James bows out the door.

Sirius thumps his head back against his headboard, listening to the ticking and groaning of tower’s ancient wood beams as the occasional gust of wind rattles the windows. He picks up the book again—it’s not bad, except that most Oxford men seem generally insufferable, which he already suspected since they’re basically the muggle equivalent of his parent’s crowd—but he flops it down onto his chest after he reads the same paragraph twice and still has no idea what it says.

He should have gone downstairs with James. People think he’s been acting weird since the Hufflepuff match—Marlene told Dorcus told Peter, who of course told him—and the last thing he needs is anyone prying further into all _that_. He should make an appearance, not that he can ever just be there. No, he’s the ringmaster, or at the very least a lead acrobat—center stage—and tonight he’s just not up for it. He still feels like he was drug three miles behind a hippogriff, for one thing.

He turns to look at Remus. His bandages are off now thanks to Pomfrey’s quick work Saturday morning, but there’s a new scar, raised and pink, above his left eyebrow. The one across the bridge of his nose is the most noticeable, but they crisscross his whole body. (As far as Sirius can tell, anyway—Remus doesn’t change in front of them.) He’s always wanted to trace them with his fingers, which he might try as a joke if he weren’t so sure Remus would go ballistic and hex him.

He's never said as much but Sirius knows he avoids having to stand and speak in front of their classes because of them, even though he’s one of the smartest in their year. He’s afraid people will notice something and start asking questions. (Which isn’t exactly unfounded paranoia. There’d be an outcry if people found out their kids sleep downstairs from a werewolf; he would have to leave Hogwarts, certainly.) (Which is the only reason Sirius has conceded to let him hide, when really he wants to drag him by the arm out into the light where he belongs.)

Remus pouts in his sleep, eyebrows furrowed a little. Frowning.

Sirius picks up his book again, raking his hair back from his face. Yesterday in the hospital wing, it had felt like the easiest thing. He doesn’t know what made him do it. Just that there were no words to make anything okay, and he’d looked so miserable and alone and far away, and it was right, somehow. 

After Remus nodded off he should have pulled his hand away, but he didn’t. He sat there with the static of every single nerve ending firing in his fingers and the impossible heat of Remus’s skin until he heard Pomfrey’s shoes clicking up behind him as she came to shoo him away. He needed his own rest. (She hasn’t said as much, but she knows they know about Remus’s condition, and she suspects they do _something_ to try to help him when he Changes, though he doesn’t think she’s guessed what. But she’s never told McGonagall, and she sneaks them healing salves and such, the marvelous woman.)

Remus has long bony fingers like a cellist, and two faint scars crossed on the back of his right hand; X marks the spot.

Tossing the book closed onto his bed, he slumps down further onto his pillow and rubs his hands hard over his face. He knows what to do sneaking around with Arjun, or with the Muggle boys in London before that. There’s a thrilling order to the chaos of sneaking off from the crowd at a club or pub, into the shadows. Brushes against his arm that could almost be accidents. Raised eyebrows. _You?_ Kisses sloppy and desperate as he grasps at the smallest release, licking cigarette lips he knows he’ll never taste again. 

This is different. This is golden-wheat hair and pink cheeks (because seriously, how can a person _always_ be blushing?) and the feathery churning in his stomach that’s only getting harder to ignore. It’s ridiculously long eyelashes and when did he get so _tall_? Honeyed brown eyes and when he looks up the catch in your chest because he sees, whatever it is inside you, hiding away, he _sees_. 

Merlin’s flaming goatee. This can’t be happening.

Sirius swings his legs over the side of the bed. He has to get out of here. He can’t stop, can’t talk to anyone, or they’ll know. They’ll take one look at him and see it: Remus is sleeping off one of the worst nights of his life, and all he can think about is what it would feel like to feel those hands on either side of his face.

The Cloak. James doesn’t like them to use it without him, but this is an emergency. He’s bent over James’s trunk rummaging around, pulling out his wand to just _Accio_ the thing and be done with it when the sound makes him freeze.

Remus moans again, tossing onto his back. Nightmares are pretty common for a couple days after a moon. Remus hasn't told them, of course, but Sirius usually wakes when he cries out. He always wonders what he’s chasing, or what he’s running from.

A whimpering sound snags in Remus’s throat. Sirius glances over his shoulder at the door, but it’s early still. He thinks about transforming into Padfoot to see if he can hear anyone on the stairs.

Padfoot. Once it comes to him, he stops thinking. About the hole in his stomach and about James and Peter and all the reasons why this is such a monumentally bad idea. Because this might be a real way to help for once, a way to make things better again, even a little.

He flicks his wand at his hangings, and they snap shut around his bed. His heart beats hard against his ribs as he sits down at the foot of Remus’s. With another flick of his wand, Remus’s drapes slide closed around them, cloaking them in dimness. He swallows, then raises his wand and closes his eyes.

Transforming nauseated him when he first learned; bones shortening, intestines squelching and rearranging, the squeeze in his heart and choke in his lungs. Now he rides it, impatient. When it’s over, he can see Remus toss again through the dark. He smells like parchment and earl grey and stale sweat.

He shifts into a crouch and scoots up the mattress on his forelegs, tail tucked, closer and closer until his head rests level with Remus’s. Remus groans, but then his arm finds Padfoot’s thick fur and he curls into it. 

Sirius can feel his breath warm in the soft fur behind his ear. Remus clings to him at first, fingers winding through his fur, but then his breathing settles and it’s just the weight of his arm over Sirius’s back. His tail thumps once before he pins it beneath his back legs. 

He licks his snout and tucks his head between his front paws, his breathing slowing closer to Remus’s little by little. He waits—just for a minute, just to be sure—but Remus doesn’t stir.

***

The room is quiet when Remus slips from a dream into waking. He doesn’t open his eyes, trying to hold onto the peaceful lolling inside him, gentle and slippery, like falling asleep in a docked rowboat in the sunshine. His snuggles deeper under his blankets, burying his nose in the thick musk of soft fur.

He blinks, sputtering. In the overcast dawn light, he can just discern the large black lump curled next to him. His sluggish synapses lag a few seconds and then he jumps, nearly rolling out of bed. The black lump resettles itself and snorts, an irritated canine grumble.

“What…what the… _Pads?_ ” His voice is a hiss as he glances frantically around him (not that he can see if James or Peter is awake with his hangings closed). The dog shuffles again like it’s annoyed at being disturbed, but then its eyes snap open and it leaps to its feet, head whipping back and forth until its eyes find Remus. Its tail tucks between its legs.

“ _Sirius_?” he whispers again, heat flaring in his cheeks. “What. In. Holy. Fuck.” He throws the blankets off his legs. The dog paces in place, trying to keep its balance on the mattress. “What is going on?”

It sits down on its haunches, staring at him. Cowering?

“Change back. Now.” Confusion and hurt bubble in his stomach. Sirius knows—he _knows_ what the time around a moon is like for him. And after whatever that was behind the tapestry after the Hufflepuff match, after seeing him sneak off with Arjun outside the library, the bruises on Arjun’s neck at breakfast the next day—

His pulse quickens, his breathing sharp and fast, the calm he woke to evaporated into the morning cool. What kind of prank would this even be? Maybe they took pictures of him snuggled up to a dog? But who would even care about that, anyway? And why is Sirius still in his bed?

The dog blinks at him before it sighs and lowers its head. There’s a whirl of black fur and paws and feet and tanned skin as its legs lengthen at disturbing angles and its torso unfurls, and then there’s Sirius plopped off balance beside him in a t-shirt and black jeans, eyes bright silver in the dimness and wider than Remus has ever seen them. Sirius swallows (his showy, ridiculous swallow) and Remus clutches his sheets in his fists to keep from shoving him backwards off the bed.

“What the fuck?” he repeats instead.

Sirius opens his mouth, then closes it. “I—you—you were—” He doesn’t sound like himself at all. He sounds like Remus, words jumbling before they get to his mouth. Sirius rakes a hand up through his hair and clenches it there. “You fell asleep, after dinner.” His eyes dart around for anything but Remus, but there’s nothing else to focus on in the gray light. “You were having a nightmare, and I was here—and I just—" For the briefest second he looks like he might cry. He lets his hair fall around his face and stares at his lap.

Red heat licks up Remus’s neck and into his face. He didn’t think Sirius knew about his nightmares.

He’s always in them. Since they started coming with him through the Change, they all are. It’s the four of them in the shack or the forest or on the quidditch pitch. The details vary, but it’s always the same—this is the time they can’t control him, and he’s ripping them to pieces.

Remus chews at his bottom lip, wishing he could dive under his blankets. He realizes with a jolt how close Sirius is, his legs crossed under him, their knees almost touching.

A mattress creaks across the room, then a low groan as James stretches himself awake. The soft ping of drapes sliding open.

Sirius’s head jerks up, his eyes wide. It's such an unfamiliar expression from Sirius that it takes Remus a second to recognize it as fear.

It isn’t a prank. Whatever’s happening, whatever this _is_ , James and Peter can’t find out.

“Oy, Sleeping Beauty,” James calls blearily across the room. “A solid thirteen hours is going to have to get you through.” 

Remus hears the click of James’s armoire opening and he peeks out. James is scratching his head and rifling through his shirts, his back to them. When he ducks back behind his drapes Sirius hasn’t moved. He’s just staring at him with his enormous damn eyes.

Remus does the only thing he can think of, what he wanted to do in the first place, and shoves Sirius hard in the chest with both hands.

He topples backward, past Remus’s hangings, and then he’s gone except for a loud thump.

There’s a pause, and then James cackling across the room. “Alright there, Padfoot?”

Remus pulls back his drapes. Sirius is splayed on the floor between their beds, half in Remus’s hangings and half in his own. Peter’s on all fours poking from behind his own hangings, a hand only partially covering his laughter.

“Must've—got turned—around—” Sirius mutters as he struggles to right himself. Remus tries to make his face look amused, or at least surprised.

“Why are you still dressed?” James asks, still laughing as he strides over and offers Sirius a hand. 

“Oh. Uh, guess I fell asleep reading.” Once he’s standing, James claps him on the back.

“You two.” He nods at them both, and Remus goes numb. “Are spending too much time together.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been writing fanfic ever since a coworker of mine suggested it to shake me out of a funk I'd gotten into with my original writing projects (and it worked!), but I haven't posted any of it until now. Since writing is saving my life in this COVID quarantine madness, I figure there's no time like the present. Hope you enjoyed it!


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